Recently-Acquired Vinyl...

A necessary re-booting of the blog today, in slight abeyance following the conclusion of the World Cup ’74 portraits project (& the temporal demands of a work-based study programme followed by domestic decorating commitments: our new ‘creative’ room is looking fabulous, at least), with evidence of the recently-invested-in Dome box set - a quite magnificent, lavishly-presented artefact comprising 5 vinyl LPs, including the original 4 recordings re-pressed & housed within sleeves that incorporate reproductions of the originals within their design and ‘antiquated’ finish, other associated artwork & fascinatingly illustrated sleevenotes, & even an inexplicable matchbox of plastic fragments - an essential addition to and component of the truly discerning record collection, here presented in photographic form for your visual delight, although of course the ultimate point is the sonic contents of the compendium, into which we have been immersing ourselves for edification & inspiration.

The year so far seems to have been spent listening to the collected Dome (obviously), most of Wire (of whom Dome were two, of course), & the complete Felt, which begs an intriguing question: might it be possible to continue in this vein, consuming only, or primarily, the music of bands with four-letter names, throughout its course? Another ‘project’, perhaps…

Recently-acquired Vinyl LP of the Day #2 (Wire 'Chairs Missing')

Celebrating another recent addition to the vinyl collection in the form of what has proved to be one of the enduring post-punk classics, Wire’s second album ‘Chairs Missing’.

In keeping with the philosophy intended to generate the current hunt for items to collect, this LP, as such, is one never personally owned previously, although I did have a selection of its contents as included within the band’s ‘On Returning’ compilation LP.

To describe the experience of hearing the vinyl LP as nothing short of a revelation feels like something of an understatement, such is the difference, positively, compared to the familiar CD & mp3 versions (some of the tracks, indeed, are virtually unrecognizable from their compressed formats) – electric music with such a buzz & edge of palpable energy requires the physicality of vinyl to properly communicate itself & the range of its subtleties, & no substitutes should be accepted in future, unless very reluctantly under circumstances of no alternative.

And of course, there’s also the consideration of the artwork, at the correct 12” square scale to do it proper justice as, again, physical entity.

Badge of the Day #86 (Hansa Rostock)

 

Featuring the very latest addition to the European football clubs collection, with an object representing the fabulous Hansa Rostock, who would have emerged out of the former East Germany as a name to admire & subsequently follow, certainly from earlier days & quite possibly from the time of the 1974 World Cup finals, as a result of the club being home to one of the DDR’s evocatively memorable names in the form of Joachim Streich, scorer of two goals during the tournament, & who I would later, in September 1979, have witnessed playing, & scoring, for 1FC Magdeburg, to whom he’d been transferred in 1975 (Streich scored the ‘Burg’s equalizing goal – at 1 - 1 – their 2 – 3 defeat at Wrexham in the First Round, first leg tie of the 1979-80 European Cup-Winners’ Cup. He subsequently put the final nail in the coffin of Wrexham’s elimination by scoring very late in Magdeburg’s 5 – 2 extra-time victory in the return match).

The badge, a contemporary object thus lacking any particular hauntological quality other than memories of the name, features Hansa (as they were renamed, from the regally-sounding ‘Empor’, in 1965) Rostock’s crest with its jaunty ship that refers to the city’s maritime history as a Hanseatic seaport which continues to the present day.

The name also reminds one of Berlin’s famous Hansa Tonstudio, where various post-punk bands, not least Wire, & Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, have recorded, thus allowing a pleasant link between football & music, two of those totems of TOoT’s cultural landscape.

Brand New, You're Retro (not for the first time)

A refreshing Bank Holiday break in the splendid & creative company of A in lovely, slow Ludlow, &, pottering the streets on this rainy afternoon, the finding in a shop window of topical iconography displaying something of a handmade, distressed &, frankly, punky aesthetic that hauntologically recalls 1977 & the Silver Jubilee more than suggesting the celebrating of contemporary proceedings & anniversaries (this without even pausing to consider the other banner requesting the salvation of a monarch of the opposite gender, whatever that’s all about), at the same time rather serendipitously relating (loosely-)temporally to the current series of drawings based upon images of 1970s footballers, even if they happen to be of the pre-punk period.

In a further occurrence of serendipity, just across the street from the particular shop front in which the flag is displayed, one could find a sign advertising the name of Graham Lewis, synonymous of course with the mighty Wire, their ‘Pink Flag’ & also echoing those cultural times of the punk explosion & its post- fall-out.

Just Milling Around...

After the yellow submarine tea infuser drawn & blogged immediately previously comes another example of a watercolour drawing of Beatles-related subject/object matter in the form of the rather fetching ‘Sergeant’ peppermill, another recently invested-in must-have addition to the kitchen & home for the retromaniacally-inclined…


graphite & putty eraser, with watercolour/20x30cm

Such a study might find contextual company in the form of Euan Uglow’s painting of a Homepride ‘Flour Man’ figure, itself another retro icon to those of us able to recall such a marketing device, what might appear a humorous aside but still subject, as is obvious, to the same measured rigour of scrutiny & representation as any of the artist’s other source matter, as might be expected, & also claimed of & for the peppermill too.



Soundtrack:


Dome '1 & 2' & '3 & 4'
Wire ‘The A List’
Hanne Hukkelberg ‘Rykestrasse 68’

Not necessarily the expected soundtrack (although there’s a hopefully-still-playable cassette tape of a wonderful ’20 Years Ago’ anniversary of the Sgt Pepper album’s release Radio One documentary broadcast I’d love to listen to again, considering) but, rather, another blast of retromania, & an altogether more obscure corner of, with the delights of the collected works of Gilbert & Lewis’s Wire-offshoot Dome, none of which was ever previously owned but the memory of one track – ‘Ritual View’ from volume 2, with its snuffily-nasal ‘chorus’ – had endured from a hearing on a dim-&-distant John Peel show: a treat it is to be reunited with, at last, & now in tangible form, along with some other rather good stuff contained within the layers & labyrinths of sonic textures & explorations. By one of those quirks of memory, & the unreliability of, I had somehow conflated the recollection of ‘Ritual View’ with that of Dome-collaborator AC Marias’ ‘Drop’, reacquainted with & mentioned in these parts recently, where its separateness became apparent, so it’s been an especial mission to locate & establish the certainty of the facts of ‘Ritual View’, which have, it transpires, not disappointed: not least, the lyrics at one point make reference to "graphite marks", which is rather appropriate under the circumstances.
In the interests of verity, it should be stated that Dome were listened to earlier in the week, whilst completing a couple of job application forms: the Wire compilation & the enchanting world of Hanne H’s ‘Rykestrasse 68', too-long unvisited, actually accompanied the two sessions of the drawing process.